The Israel military court has extended administrative detention for two months in addition to three months already detained for civil rights lawyer Dr. Yousef Abdul Haq, a lecturer at An-Najah National University and the Cultural Coordinator for the Tanweer Palestinian Cultural Enlightenment Forum, currently detained in Ofer Prison near Ramallah.
Yousef Abdul Haq was arrested November 7th, 2011 at his home at 2:00 AM, suffering from illness which requires constant dosage of medicine, forcing his transfer to a hospital immediately after his arrest in Ramla.
He was sentenced to two months in administrative detention immediately.
This arbitrary administrative detention is legally incompatible with the most basic international standards of human rights, because it is without any specific charge against the prisoner. These arbitrary detentions depend on the military file and “secret evidence” which cannot be seen by the detainee or defense lawyers. This file is prepared by Israel intelligence and is “collected” illegally.
This type of detention is internationally banned and is impacting lawmakers in the Palestinian Legislative Council, members of local councils, university students, political activists, academics, trade unionists and even women and children.
The imposition of administrative detention by Article 111 of the military state of emergency imposed by the British colonial authorities of Palestine September, 1945 is illegal on the grounds that Article 43 of the Hague international agreement of 1907 prohibits an occupying power to change the legislative reality of the country occupied.
Administrative detention is the endless suffering of the prisoners because they may de detained for a decade, physically and psychologically impacting the detainee and their family based on the expectation that the next decision will be an extension of detention.
The International Solidarity Foundation for Human Rights received from the Israeli military court in Ofer, that the number of additional administrative detentions issued by the Israeli military governor reached a total of 5,971 since the beginning of 2004 until the end of 2010.
We in the Tanweer Enlightenment Forum, call for the release of our colleague Dr. Yousef immediately from behind bars, and we hold the Government responsible for the conditions of Israel’s occupation, in respect to his health. We demand the end of the administrative detentions which are contrary to international law..
On this occasion, we declare our solidarity with the prisoner hero Khader Adnan, who is continuing his hunger strike battle in his 55th day to end the administrative detentions. We also call on international institutions and the Arab and local media to expose the policy of administrative detention. We uphold the work of a united front for the release of Palestinian prisoners including lawyers, members of the Legislative Council, academics, students, children and women.
We call for the end of administrative detentions forever.
Freedom for political prisoners.
Close the detention camps and prisons and abolish administrative detention.
“Any movement that does not support its political internees is a sham movement.” – US political prisoner Ojore Lutalo
Maali, daughter of jailed Islamic Jihad spokesman Khodr Adnan, stands next to a picture of her father as she takes part in a protest outside Israel’s Ofer prison near the West Bank town of Betunia on 30 January 2012. (Photo: AFP – Abbas Momani)
Political prisoners, their families, and their concerns and causes enjoy massive support in Palestinian society. Palestinians who may have never joined a boycott campaign or acted to break the siege of Gaza routinely demonstrate for the rights of detainees and contribute to support their families. Among political factions, the liberation of all prisoners is a clear point of consensus. Competing parties demand and celebrate the return of each others’ imprisoned members as a matter of course.
Political Prisoner Ameer Makhoul argues that the PLO’s official position on prisoners is, “a recipe for delaying and deferring the liberation of the prisoners indefinitely.”
In addition, he says that, “marginalizing the issue within the overall Palestinian agenda” fails to reflect this overwhelming sentiment.
Unfortunately, the same can be said of the global movement in solidarity with Palestinians and their struggle. Too often, it has treated a concern at the forefront of the Palestinian movement as an inconsequential afterthought, when it has mentioned it all.
Huge mobilizations by detainees, like the October hunger strike that, at its peak, included 3,000 people (and galvanized Palestinian society in support), received only a minimal amount of responses from overseas. Also, the daily struggles of individual prisoners, like the current hunger strike of administrative detainee Khader Adnan, barely elicit any notice.
Why does this matter? Aside from a basic principle of solidarity – backing the priorities of the people we support – these prisoners remind us, and the world, of “the Palestinians’ right, and duty, to resist occupation, colonization and displacement employing all means of struggle,” in Makhoul’s words.
Their perseverance, inside and outside prison walls, testifies to the fact that Palestine needs neither our charity nor our sympathy, but rather deserves our solidarity as it struggles to free itself.
The “internationalization” of prisoner support Makhoul advocates could renew the solidarity movement’s focus on this Palestinian agency. While Israel’s apartheid system includes too many shocking injustices to count, the prisoners are also an electrifying and radicalizing force, whose very existence defies attempts to depoliticize their struggle or reduce it to a humanitarian concern. A mobilized, energized and expanded worldwide solidarity movement would also offer much-needed political backing to them, and the families and communities that regularly mobilize for them.
Many organizations, both Palestinian and international, work to educate a global audience about these issues. Addameer, the Campaign to Free Ahmad Saadat, Defence for Children International, the International Campaign for Releasing the Abducted Members of Parliament, Samidoun, Sumoud, and the UFree Network, as well as media like the Electronic Intifada and the Middle East Monitor, generate tremendous amounts of high-quality information. But while information is a necessary prerequisite, it is ultimately from mobilization that public awareness, as well as political change, emerges.
Putting information to use – building a global campaign to free Palestinian prisoners – will require a strategy to build these organizations and expand their activities, while also engaging broader solidarity networks. Makhoul proposes a National Coordinating Committee, akin to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, to oversee these efforts. In the meantime, international solidarity activists can and should respond to the current “steadfastness, defiance and struggle” of Palestine and its prisoners.
Recurring popular mobilizations, like Palestinian Prisoners’ Day (April 17) and Gaza’s weekly occupation of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), could be replicated, on similar or more modest scales, in cities from New York to Islamabad. (Of course Gaza lacks explicitly Zionist institutions, which might prove to be more opportune targets elsewhere.) Rapid response networks could answer detentions, repression, and resistance by protesting Israeli Embassies, consulates, and missions, as well as foreign governments and international organizations collaborating with Israel.
The prisoners’ struggle can also invigorate existing campaigns. It overlaps neatly with the three demands of the BDS movement: An end to occupation and colonization (including detentions), full equality for Arab and Palestinian citizens (in judicial and correctional matters as well as all others), and the right of return for Palestinian refugees (like those expelled from their homes following release from prison).
BDS organizers have pursued prison profiteers like G4S, JC Bamford Excavators, the Israeli Medical Association, and the Volvo Group. Anti-siege efforts like the Free Gaza Movement and Viva Palestinia, too, could highlight Israel’s prison apparatus as an essential part of the system of militarized apartheid they oppose – and one explicitly intended to crush legitimate resistance.
Being proactive should be the core principle on every front. Many solidarity activists have complained of the disproportionate media attention lavished on Gilad Shalit and his family, but few have taken the time to investigate the global networks built to support them, or to learn the many lessons they have to offer. Giving Palestinian prisoners meaningful solidarity will ultimately require a similar movement focused on making their lives and struggles unavoidable topics of any informed conversation on Palestine.
The Israeli government oversees the world’s most militarized society, and one that cannot sustain itself without massive, ongoing repression, from its border walls to its isolation units. The prisoners illuminate the ugly face of this 21st-century apartheid, while offering a glimpse of the decolonized society that will inevitably replace it. Their struggles stand at the core of the broader movement for a free Palestine. All of us who join their struggle should acknowledge their leadership, appreciate their sacrifice, and offer them our full support.
Joe Catron is a (BDS) organizer in Gaza, Palestine. A citizen of the United States, he joined the October hunger strike with Palestinian prisoners and is currently editing an anthology of prisoner’s stories. He blogs and tweets.
The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect Al-Akhbar’s editorial policy.
“This is the life of Palestinian people,” Obada Saed Bilal said one recent morning. “If I hadn’t been detained, I would have been wounded or martyred. I was in detention for over nine years, but I still resist. My marriage and university studies are my ways to keep fighting now.”
Obada and his wife, Nili Zahi Safad, sat in the lobby of the Commodore Gaza Hotel. The Ministry of Detainees in Gaza has temporarily housed them there, along with a number of other former political prisoners who, like Bilal, were freed in the prisoner exchange on 18 October 2011.
Israel forced Bilal, a native of Nablus in the West Bank, to relocate to Gaza following his release, along with 204 other prisoners expelled from their homes in the West Bank.
Safad moved to Gaza shortly after her husband’s arrival. They had been married for only twenty days when his arrest separated them on 16 April 2002.
“I was brutally beaten for two hours,” Bilal said, recalling the 1am military raid in the West Bank village of Aghwar in which he was detained. “Then I was taken to the Petach Tikva detention center in Tel Aviv. They interrogated me for ninety days. This was my most difficult time as a prisoner. I was kept in isolation, handcuffed and blindfolded, and interrogated for about twelve hours every day.”
After his interrogation, the Israeli authorities sent Bilal to Ashkelon, where a military court sentenced him to 26 years.
Isolation
Safad, also a former political prisoner, told a similar story.
“I was detained at a checkpoint,” she said of her arrest on 11 November 2009. “I was returning from Hebron to Nablus, when they arrested me and sent me to detention. They kept me in isolation for ninety days before transferring me to the HaSharon prison for women. About 17 women were detained at HaSharon then; now there are only seven.
“While being interrogated, women are treated exactly like the men,” she added. “We were deprived of food, sleep and even access to the toilet. They shouted insults at us. I was kept handcuffed and blindfolded. Once they chained my hands to the ceiling for four days.”
Bilal and Safad told The Electronic Intifada that their conditions barely improved after they were transferred to prisons following their ninety-day interrogation periods.
“Our daily life was harsh and difficult,” Bilal said. “Our basic human and medical needs were routinely denied. The jailers treated us poorly, the food was awful and we were routinely denied any contact with our families. I wasn’t able to see mine for three years. We were kept handcuffed for ten hours a day, and only given one hour for recreation. Sometimes they punished us by denying even this.”
The Israeli authorities seemed determined to prevent contact with family members inside the prison. “Once I met my two brothers in prison. But when the jailers learned that we were brothers, they separated us,” Bilal said. “And when my wife was arrested, I asked to be placed with her, but the prison administration refused.” Their reunion seemed less likely after Safad completed her sentence and was released on 10 July 2011.
Renewed vows
The authorities also tried to prevent inmates from forming any bonds with each other. “They transferred us among prisons only to confuse us. As soon as we made new friends, they would transfer us again. This was psychological punishment,” Bilal explained.
He had a problem with his eyesight before his arrest, and it became worse in prison. “But they refused to treat it,” he said. “It deteriorated until I couldn’t see at all.”
The International Middle East Media Center reported in late November that there were at least forty persons living with disabilities, such as Bilal’s blindness, among the prisoner population. Many prisoners have died due to systematic medical negligence and torture (“Forty disabled Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel,” 30 November 2011).
Today, Bilal and Safad’s lives go on in a new city, far from their families and community in Nablus.
Bilal, an An-Najah National University public relations student when arrested, has returned to his studies, this time in politics and religion at the Islamic University of Gaza. He and Safad continue supporting Bilal’s brothers, Moad and Othman, both current political prisoners.
The couple also marked the end of their separation by renewing their marriage vows. “We held another wedding party after I was released and my wife came to Gaza, to celebrate our life and resistance,” Bilal said. “This is our message to the world, that we must celebrate our struggle and keep fighting.”
Joe Catron is an international solidarity activist and boycott, divestment, and sanctions organizer in Gaza. He blogs at joecatron.wordpress.com and tweets at @jncatron.
Khader Adnan, an imprisoned Palestinian activist and a spokesperson for the Islamic Jihad party, has been on an ongoing hunger strike since December 17. He is facing severe health consequences for his 43-day hunger strike and needs international support and solidarity to publicize his case and that of his nearly 5,000 fellow Palestinian political prisoners inside the jails of the Israeli occupation. He was transferred today to a hospital and is continuing to refuse food, awaiting the arrival of two Palestinian doctors. He is currently in a wheelchair because he cannot walk, due to weakness from his hunger strike.
Addameer details the experience of Khader Adnan with the Israeli occupation. He is currently held under administrative detention (arbitrary detention without charge or trial, based on secret evidence, and renewable indefinitely for repeated periods of up to six months.) Khader Adnan was issued a four-month administrative detention order on January 8, and faces another military court hearing on January 30. This is the eighth time Adnan has been detained, and he has served a total of six years in Israeli prisons – mostly without charge or trial under the administrative detention scheme.
Khader was arrested on 17 December 2011, when Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) raided his home outside Jenin at 3:30 am. Before entering his house, soldiers used the driver that takes Khader’s father to the vegetable market, Mohammad Mustafa, as a human shield by forcing him to knock on the door of the house and call out Khader’s name while blindfolded. A huge force of soldiers then entered the house shouting. Recognizing Khader immediately, they grabbed him violently in front of his two young daughters and ailing mother.
The soldiers blindfolded him and tied his hands behind his back using plastic shackles before leading him out of his house and taking him to a military jeep. Khader was then thrown on his back and the soldiers began slapping him in the face and kicking his legs. They kept him lying on his back until they reached Dutan settlement, beating him on the head throughout the 10-minute drive. When they reached the settlement, Khader was pushed aggressively out of the jeep. Because of the blindfold, Khader did not see the wall right in front of him and smashed into it, causing injuries to his face.
Following his arrest, he was taken to interrogation, refused medical care and treatment, subject to physical abuse and mistreatment including being tied to a chair in a stressful position, causing extreme back pain, and pulling on his beard so hard that his hair was ripped out. Khader was subjected to abusive language about his family, and refused to speak any further to interrogators, as well as refusing food. In retaliation, he was placed into isolation and solitary confinement, denied family visits, awakened in the middle of the night and strip-searched. He has refused to end his strike, protesting the illegitimacy of his arbitrary detention by an illegal occupation authority as well as cruel and inhumane treatment and abuse.
Ahmad Sa’adat and hundreds of other Palestinian prisoners participated in a 23-day hunger strike in October 2011, demanding an end to isolation, abuse, and denial of family visits; Israeli promises to end isolation, aimed to secure the end of the strike, proved to be false, as Sa’adat has now spent nearly three full years inside an isolation cell.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat calls for solidarity with Khader Adnan and all of the steadfast prisoners inside the jails of the Israeli occupation who daily confront with their bodies and their lives the ongoing attacks of the occupation army and prison guards.
Picket, protest or call the Israeli embassy or consulate in your location and demand the immediate freedom of Khader Adnan, Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian political prisoners. Make it clear that you are watching the situation of Khader Adnan and that Israel is responsible for his health and life, and demand an end to the use of isolation, solitary confinement, and administrative detention. Send us reports of your protests at Israeli embassies and consulates at campaign@freeahmadsaadat.org.
Write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the prisoners’ demands are implemented. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at JER_jerusalem@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Khader Adnan. Make it clear that arbitrary detention without charge or trial is unacceptable, and that the ICRC must act to protect Palestinian prisoners from cruel and inhumane treatment.
As candidates prepared for elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in 2006, the Israeli authorities began a campaign of detention and imprisonment to thwart the growing move towards democracy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The Israeli authorities began to arrest members of Hamas: 450 were detained in 2005 to prevent their participation in the election the following year; many were held in administrative detention, without trial or charge. Despite this the elections took place and a number of the candidates in prison were elected to the PLC.
The 2006 Palestinian elections were overseen by international observers, who declared them to be free and fair (more open, it has been said, than the 2004 re-election of George W Bush). Hamas ended up as the democratically-elected Palestinian government. A number of PLC members under the Change and Reform List (including Hamas members and supporters) were also chosen by the electorate and became the target of the Israeli authorities’ constant campaign of arrest and detention.
There are, at the moment, 27 PLC members and 2 Ministers being detained by the Israeli authorities.
The Israel military court has extended administrative detention for two months in addition to three months already detained for civil rights lawyer Dr. Yousef Abdul Haq, a lecturer at An-Najah National University and the Cultural Coordinator for the Tanweer Palestinian Cultural Enlightenment Forum, currently detained in Ofer Prison near Ramallah.
